Keynote Speech of Senate President Pro-Tempore Ralph G. Recto
PHILIPPINE ASSOCIATION OF WATER DISTRICTS (PAWD)
37th National Convention
Clark, Pampanga
04 February 2016

Magandang umaga po. I am happy to see all of you again. Two years have passed since we last saw each other in Davao.

Since then, you have probably laid hundreds of kilometers of new pipes, expanded your customer base by tens of thousands, and upped the volume of your revenue water by hundreds of millions of cubic meters.

In contrast, one bill, on tax condonation that you deserve, made its torturous journey through the legislative maze through the two long years but has yet to come out of the legislative pipeline.

To the credit of the House and the Senate, however, we have done our job.

On my part, I filed the bill, defended it before the committee, co-sponsored it on the floor, and monitored the bicameral conference committee deliberations last December.

I was told that the bill will soon be on the President’s desk, the final terminus of its long journey, for his signature.

As I always believe in the better angels of our nature, I know that he will sign it soon, maybe he is just timing it so it can be his Valentine’s Day gift to you. If he does that, then, loveless he may seem, it makes him “confidently compassionate with a heart.”

But our attention should not be focused on him alone. We should also be keenly watching those who are applying to replace him.

I am compelled to say that due to what I perceive as their lack of interest on the issue of water.

If PAGASA forecasters have warned us that a dry spell is on the horizon, I wonder why this issue has not been captured by the political radars of presidentiables.

Reviewing the statements they have been making recently, I am prepared to conclude that there is an ongoing intellectual drought in water discussion.

They have a sound bite for every issue, but no sound program for the most important – water.

Despite the fact that we have been inundated by a torrent of water-related news.

• Daily, provinces have been reporting about the ravages of the dry spell. Dams have dried up, and crops are failing. In one province, it must have been so hot that even rats have come out of their cool hiding dens.

• A string of provincial governments has placed their areas under a state of calamity.

• The outlook is so bad that even the usually chirpy Department of Agriculture has downgraded its usual cheerful palay harvest forecast. In fact, agricultural output last year remained flat due to the reduced rainfall.

• But it is not just farming towns which are getting parched; Metro Manila may soon too. NCR’s two water concessionaires have grown hoarse warning their customers that supply will be tight this summer, and to brace for possible rationing.

But lack of water cannot always be pinned on God—it can also be blamed on governance, as what a disturbing news just this week seems to tell us.

This is the UNICEF – World Health Organization joint report card on the state of water and sanitation in the Philippines. At pasintabi po sa mga sasabihin ko.

The report’s summary that 7.5 million Filipinos have no toilets, while 8.4 million have no access to clean drinking water, may not jolt us, couched as they are in cold prose, but what’s disturbing are buried in its fine print.

• 7.1 million Filipinos resort to “open defecation” while 570,000 use “unimproved sanitation facilities” like buckets and open-pit latrines.

• For drinking, 2.3 million Filipinos use untreated “surface water” of rivers, dams, and canals.

• In addition, 6.1 million Filipinos source their drinking water from “unimproved drinking water sources” like unprotected dug wells and unprotected springs.

What do the above tell us? That in this age of smart phones with flash drives, there are millions without flush toilets.

While our movies depict our First World state, so much so that a very, very good looking character in one very, very good movie can retch on her Balenciaga, outside the silver screen, however, millions empty their waste on buckets.

No other report indicts our skewed progress than this. No other data portrays the lack of inclusive growth than this one.

But this reality is not found on reports alone. Presidentiables encounter them on their sorties around the country.

That once green farmlands are turning brown is a sight they regularly see from windows of their chartered jets.

They see toilet-less barong-barongs perched on the esteros along their regular helicopter routes.

In their town hall meetings, irrigation tops the list of what farmers ask of them. The lack of washrooms in schools is a regular feedback they get from teachers.

Blackout-plagued towns are complaining about lack of water that drives hydroelectric plants. On the campaign trail, they meet people whose demand is very basic but many of us take for granted: clean piped-in water.

You should join in their chorus, too. And you have a powerful voice which can be heard and heeded.

You are present in 514 towns and cities. It is a grassroots network that is wider than the country’s biggest bank.

One in five Filipinos is a customer of yours. Combined, you represent 20 million people. Supposed this population will be awarded congressional representation, then, in theory, you can end up occupying almost 60 seats in the Batasan.

Your charter may require you to be apolitical, but it does not prevent you from being patriotic.

In fact, you will be performing good citizenship by advocating your members’ right to clean, reliable, affordable, and adequate water.

If mankind cannot survive without water, if civilization depends on it, then I ask you: what advocacy is more noble than calling for its enjoyment by all?

You know, election, like the water business, should be demand-driven. It is not enough that applicants for the highest office in the land should just supply us with what they intend to do with the mandate they want us to give them.

We are not mere consumers of their plans.

On the contrary, we should start aggressively demanding what we want, instead of being passive receptors of their plans. In short, we should be supplier of ideas.

Kahit sa local, huwag tayong humingi ng alak sa kandidato. Hingin natin ang plano nila para sa tubig na maiinom.

This way, we catapult the issue of water on the top of their platform and front and center of the presidential debate.

As they thirst for more information about water, we quench it with good plans that benefit our base. That way, too, we raise their WQ or water quotient and become champions of our cause.

Sa pahanon ngayon na maraming naglilipanang slogan,dalawa lang ang dapat ibandila ninyo. Kapag kumatok ang isang gustong maging Pangulo sa inyo, dalawang kataga lang ang inyong isasagot:

Una, ay PAWD o Pagusapan Ang Water Districts.

Pangalawa, ay WATER Issue or Water as The Election’s Relevant Issue.

Bakit hindi natin ito gagawin? No challenge will exact the greatest demand on our collective will and national energy than ensuring water security.

The work is hard, the stakes are high. Consider these:

If we add 1.76 million people to our population yearly, then we have to correspondingly increase our potable water supply by 115 billion liters annually.

But that is just water for household consumption: for cooking, bathing, drinking and for shampooing the family car.

Because Filipinos don’t just love rice, but unli-rice, then we will need 208 billion liters of water to grow the 208 million kilos of rice that we must add to our supply yearly.

To produce these, we need to open up 84,000 hectares of new lands for rice production every year – an area one and a quarter times the size of Clark.

We also depend on water for the electricity that runs our factories, powers our homes, and yes, charges our phones so you and I can selfie together later, Instagram the lechon cholesterol that will clog our hearts, and log on to FB for the latest chismis.

The average Pinoy consumes 594 kilowatt-hours per year, a great deal of it from water passing through turbines.

Two, five, ten years from now, where will we get the water for all of these?

The challenges are so great that these cannot be addressed by dispersed agencies with different mandates. It should be coordinated by a single office, preferably a full pledged department whose head must hold a Cabinet rank.

The idea is to fold agencies like NIA, LWUA, MWSS, NWRB under this proposed department. A Department of Water and Sanitation can be considered by the next administration.

These are the issues that must be raised with the presidentiables. If they lug around bottles to drink during sorties, then they must be told that the nation needs to be hydrated, too.

What will be their program on irrigation? Or in sanitation in schools? Or bringing clean water to households? Or protecting watersheds so that dams will not go dry?

Water should not trickle-down to the bottom of their platforms. It is must be on top. Clean water must displace the hot air in their rhetoric.

And we can do that by practicing demand-driven politics by asking them, or for that matter, any candidate who puts his or her name on the ballot, on what is his or her program on the single most important ingredient for human life to exist – water.

Huwag po tayong mahiyang itanong ito: Gaano po kahalaga ang tubig? Ang pruweba ay nakikita natin tuwing nagtatalumpati sila. Ano ang nakapatong sa lectern?

Hindi ba’t isang basong tubig?

At kapag naging Pangulo na sila, ano ang katabi kapag nag-so-SONA? Tubig din.

Maraming salamat po.

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